Years of careful planning and funding bids have gone into the scheme to make the area around South Kensington station, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum an easier place to visit.

The council, with support from the London Mayor and TfL, intends to:

* Make Exhibition Road an 800m 'shared-space' between pedestrians and cars, leading to the scrapping of road markings and kerbs in time for the 2012 Olympics. [

* Pave the famous street in Chinese black and white granite, at a cost of £2million, and close the right turn into Cromwell Road to traffic.

* Spend £5.5m unravelling the one-way system around the tube, creating a T-junction outside the tube and pedestrianising Thurloe Street.

Over the years, some plans - such as a moving walkway for the museum underpass - have fallen by the wayside.

But at last, work to change the traffic system has started.

In a recession, is it worth it? Lead council officer, Bill Mount, thinks so.

He said: "The space we are creating will be here for the next 100 years. It will make people stay in the area for longer, and residents will have an improved environment.

"There is a great cost benefit."

Although many Royal Borough residents' groups support the project, others are less sure.

In recent weeks, campaigners, who include the West London Residents' Association, have submitted a 3,000-signature petition asking for the scheme to be scrapped.

They fear that blind people will be vulnerable to oncoming cars in the shared space.

A protest march is now being planned for this summer.

Mr Mount countered their worries: "We have hours and hours of film footage of Exhibition Road and research is still underway."

He added that textured warning strips and raised paving could well be put in place to warn blind people about vehicles, which will be confined to just one side of Exhibition Road.

He also predicts that shared space concept should slow the traffic to 20mph.

"I can assure you we've thought very, very hard, and a very serious report is going to the council's cabinet," he said.

Ultimately, it will be the cabinet's job to approve the balance of pedestrian concerns with the ambitious design.

Whatever the council decides, the mere cost of Exhibition Road, like the planning battles surrounding the Sloane Square roundabout and Holland Park School, is set to make it a divisive borough issue.